Asking Questions
by 332249
Summary: Sam and Dean occasionally hang around to answer questions when the police clean up after a hunt. Usually they lie. Brenda Johnson knows they are lying, but what she can't figure out is why...


Sam Winchester was bored. That wasn't new. Hours on the road in the Impala, hours in a myriad of motels scattered across the country, made him familiar with the sensation. It also made him very practiced at countering boredom. He leaned back in his uncomfortable chair and _thought._ His mind wandered. Bobby Singer once told him that he was a "deep little shit," and… the man wasn't wrong.

In this instance, Sam cast back to his Stanford days, to the introduction of the prisoner's dilemma. Two criminals, separated by the police. Both told if just one confesses, he gets off scott free while his partner gets ten years; if both confess, they both get five years; if neither confesses the cops prove they were guilty anyway and both get ten years. Every college professor agreed the best thing to do was to confess everything. It might not earn them the best possible pay-out, but it was the only way to avoid the worst-case scenario. It was a hedging of bets. And honestly, most prisoners agreed. Most criminals did not trust their partners, not really.

But most college professors and most criminals had never met Sam Winchester's big brother. Add Dean Winchester to the theoretical scenario ruled by human behaviors and logic, and everything gets tossed in a blender. There were days when his brother defined the term "counter-intuitive." Although, privately, Sam doubted his brother's ability to define the term with words.

That was how Sam came to be lost on thought when the door to his interrogation room opened and a petite blond woman strolled in. "Sir, sorry to keep you waiting," the woman murmured distractedly, rifling through on over-sized black purse clearly looking for something in its depths.

{No, you're not.} Sam thought. {You make people wait to make them bored and ready to talk with anyone about anything, even their interrogator. And nice job trying to make me feel unimportant. Prodding my ego like that…Textbook, really. Too bad for you, I've read that textbook.} With that thought came a series of memories, still in his Stanford days. Over summer, a summer class…resume padding…and a teacher with a thick Georgian accent… Professor Johnson?!

"Its quite the to-do that you and your brother found yourselves in." Johnson exclaimed, her voice light and slightly breathy bringing to mind stereotypical beauty queens and cheerleaders. "And you two are quite the heroes of the hour."

Sam snorted. "I bet the scattered-brained dumb-blond act really works out here. I like the dress, by the way, big flower print instead of business suit. Really sells it. So, what? Are you calling the shots on this investigation or are you just the big guns interrogator they called in?"

The Deputy Chief visibly paused while absorbing Sam's comments and suppositions. That was not how this conversation was supposed to go. She'd seen the scuffed up work boots on his feet and the well worn flannel shirt on his back, and made assumptions about her subject. None of them included that sharp look in his eye or him calling her out on her interrogation style.

And then there was that niggling in the back of her head that she should know him from somewhere…

Sam watched her face carefully as she stared at him. "You're in charge, right? And the bug guns; that's how you got to be in charge. Can I ask what the problem is? Why am I taking hours to give a police statement that could've been hand-written in triplicate in ten minutes?"

Her subject was far too relaxed in a locked room in a police station: no flop sweat, no antsy twitches, no tensing in the shoulders. Innocent people, people with nothing to hide and no experience with police holding rooms, are always twitchy. Guilty people, people who have been through all this before and know they are going to get away with something, are the only ones calm and collected in here.

She leaned back in her chair and switched gears. "You and I both know that the facts don't all line up here. And your statement in frighteningly short on details, which we both know is the best way to keep all the lies straight. And then, here you are, cool as a cucumber. You tell me, what conclusions should I draw?"

Sam huffed a laugh. "Good choice. Treating me like a colleague, trying to make me give you the rope to hang me with. Actually, I'll take it as a compliment, putting me on equal footing with you. Even if its just a tactic."

Rebuffed again. Brenda felt like cursing. Instead she softened her voice and features. Let a smile play across her face. "Sam…" she began like they were old friends having a chat, inviting him to relax.

"Its not going to do any good." Sam rebuked gently. "My brother and I were out walking. We heard strange noises. When we went to investigate, we stumbled across those kids. We defended ourselves from their abductors. That's what happened. Holding us for 72 hours as material witnesses will not change those facts."

Brenda pursed her lips in annoyance, debating her next move. Threats would bounce right off of him; he knew better. Its was always so annoying when the subject knew too much. And empty threats would only weaken her already perilous position. No stick, then. No carrot, either. She had nothing to offer other than a little less time in a holding cell. He _knew_ that she was fishing.

Guessing her thoughts, Sam shook his head. "Concede the board."

Concede the board. Like this was a classroom chess game where Sam had all the ranking pieces arranged in superior position and all he had to do was let the game play out. At least he didn't gloat when she nodded sharply, acknowledging the checkmate.

.o0o.

Dean Winchester was entertaining himself. That wasn't new. Hours on the road in the Impala, days in a myriad of hotels scattered across the country made him very adept at self-entertainment. They weren't under arrest, at least. Dean knew and appreciated the difference between 'being held for questioning' and being 'under arrest.' First and foremost, it meant he was locked in a room with office furniture instead of handcuffed to the table in the god-awful uncomfortable chair.

{Seriously? Was there a scientific study dedicated to designing butt-breaking jail chairs? Did that qualify as torture? Or maybe cruel and unusual punishment? Cruel, maybe. Definitely not unusual.}

Secondly, being held for questioning meant that he didn't have to surrender his cell phone (or anything else sharp and pointy tucked away inside his jacket). So when his stomach growled after several hours of stewing, he had options.

Forty-five minutes after the first rumblings, Dean heard the commotion through the holding room's wall.

"I have a meat lover's pizza for interrogation room two and a veggie supreme for interrogation room four… Hang on, lemme get this right…" A moment of silence. "For the fine men and women of the LAPD Priority Murder Squad, in appreciation for all their hard work and dedication to annoying the crap out of two guys who were just trying to help their fellow man,' End quote. I have two cheese, two pepperoni, two sausage, and one BBQ chicken. I'm not going to get into trouble for reading that am I?"

Dean sniggered into the stunned silence that followed the reading of his note. The delivery guy definitely earned the fat tip charged to the fake credit card.

A few minutes later, his room's door opened. He threw the newcomer his best playboy grin. "Hot blond bringing me a hot pizza. I don't suppose there's a hot brunette behind you with a pack of cold beer?"

{Oh, good lord,} Brenda thought. {Sexist asshole.} But she schooled her face into a charmed smile, as though she appreciated the compliment. "I'm afraid not. I don't think the department would like the investigator beering up their witness. Probably not admissible."

Dean cocked his head, processing the accent that was pure Georgia. "How about a pecan pie from that hole in the wall…what was it called..? The pie house on Peachtree street…Pan- something?"

"Panbury's." Brenda supplied involuntarily. It was the best pie hole in Atlanta. Dean's smile changed to six-year-old-in-a-candy-store. "That's the one. I always stop by whenever I'm in Georgia. Best damn pie in the state, Panbury's."

"In the country." Brenda Leigh asserted, defending her home's pride.

"Its up there." Dean allowed. "But you can't really compare Boston crème, shoo-fly, apple, and pecan in the same category." As he talked, Dean relieved the policewoman of the pizza box and even pulled out a chair for her to sit down. Acting for all the world like he had just invited her over to his place for dinner or a date. "I have to be honest, I am still searching the country for the perfect cherry pie. Haven't found it yet."

"Sir, I didn't come in here to discuss pie…"

"Then you shouldn't have strung me along like that." Dean chided, steamrolling over whatever else she was going to say. "Throwing out names like Panbury's. Nobody likes a tease, Sweetheart."

She ignored his deliberate outrageousness. "I'd like to discuss your statement.." She tried again.

"Sure thing." Dean agreed. "Me and Sammy were out walking, heard something funky. Stuck our noses where the kidnapping douches didn't want us to. Didn't die. Are you sure there's no beer around? Nothing goes with melted mozzarella like cold draft."

"Afraid not." Brenda Leigh told him, allowing some wistfulness to color her voice. Apparently, this brother liked to play. She was pretty confident if she could get him talking, she could steer the conversation.

"Fair enough." Dean conceded and applied himself to his pizza, mouth open and lips smacking.

Brenda couldn't decide if his atrocious table manners were specifically to annoy her or if he always ate like that. She hated when subjects had food in front of them. The acts of chewing and swallowing threw off the body's involuntary responses to stress and gave the subject time to think about his answers. It also gave the subject something to do besides become uncomfortable in the extended silences.

"Problem?" Dean asked his interrogator around his second slice.

"Why were you and your brother out walking late at night?"

"Needed to stretch our legs." Dean told her easily.

"Why?"

"Because Sammy has freakishly long legs. Have you seen they guy? He doesn't even fit on the motel room bed. He really hated it when we were teenagers and he lost the coin toss and had to sleep on the couch. He'd bitch for a week about his back." Dean sniggered. "Like an eighty year old Grandma."

"Are you going to bunny trail every question I ask?" she snapped.

"If I can. I love bunnies. Especially the ones that lay chocolate eggs." Dean laughed at her exasperated face. "You got no reason to hold us. I'm sorry your city is so messed up that you got a kidnapper/murderer for a city alderman. But I am not sorry we happened to be in the right place at the right time to save those last few kids. But at the end of the day, you're gonna hafta cut us loose because, and I cannot stress this enough, we didn't actually do anything wrong here."

"You and your brother are something else." Brenda sighed.

"Sweetheart, we are the best." Dean grinned again before going back to his pizza with the exact same table manners as before.

She gave him a disgusted look and walked out the door.

"So, that's a definite no on the beer?" Dean shouted after her. "What if I can find a place that delivers?"

.o0o.

Brenda Leigh Johnson did _not_ storm into her office. Storming into her office would be unprofessional and would reflect poorly on her to her subordinates. Once she did _not_ slam her door closed, she let out a muffled scream of frustration. And thumped her head down on her desk. She _hated_ it when her subjects knew too much about the system.

"Criminals aren't supposed to be that smart." She muttered to her desktop calendar. "That's why they ended up as criminals!" With a jerk, she sat up and dove into her sweets drawer.

Det. Gabriel was the only one brave enough to knock on her door when she was _not_ storming or slamming. "Chief?" he asked, cautiously.

"Oh, Gabriel, they're not going to talk to me," she whined, opening a wrapper. "They are not going to talk to anyone here. They know we've got nothing on them."

"Are you sure we need to, Chief? They did save the day."

"The are hiding something!" Brenda exclaimed.

He didn't try to argue the point. "So… Who would they talk to?" Gabriel tried to brainstorm. "Maybe put that Dean guy on the bench next to an undercover. See if he can't get him to start bragging. Dean looks like the bragging type."

"No, Dean is obnoxiously good at talking without saying anything. He'd brag about his conquests and which female officers he would take to bed, or give us a run down of all the best pie in the country." Another chocolate disappeared down her throat. "No, the only person either of them will talk to is each other."

She sat bolt upright and looked to her younger protégé. "Of course. Gabriel, have Buzz rig up a room with a hidden microphone. Then put both of our knights in shining armor together; see what they have to say to each other."

Gabriel smiled. "And that's completely legal since there is no expectation of privacy inside a police station."

.o0o.

Sam and Dean were suspicious when they were both told that the police needed their rooms and were moved into a third interrogation room. But since they still had hours to go on what the police could hold them for, neither could exactly argue.

"Dude, seriously?" Sam demanded of his brother as soon as the doors closed behind them.

"What?"

"Ordering delivery to the police station?"

"I ordered enough for the whole squad. Anyway, I was hungry and these morons aren't going to let us walk until they show us who's in charge here." Dean snickered as he plopped himself into yet another scientific study result. "Cops, man. I mean, I know we look fishy as hell, but we were the good Samaritans in this piece. What's their problem?"

"They're not cops." Sam ran a hand through his hair. "Dean, the woman asking the questions? Her name is Professor Brenda Leigh Johnson. She literally teaches the class on interrogation techniques for the CIA."

* Brenda Leigh startled to be addressed as Professor. She hadn't been called that honorific for over a decade. Not since the CIA had her teaching interrogation/counter-interrogation classes to the best and brightest of college students. She was to get their measure to see if the Agency would be interested in recruitment.

She looked up and got a good look at her witness/possible suspect. Shaggy brown hair, liquid brown eyes, and almost six and a half feet of height and muscle. It took her a while to take ten years from the face in front of her and realize that she knew him. Had taught him. "Sam Winchester?" she breathed. *

"How the hell do you know that?" Dean sputtered.

"The CIA tried to recruit me the summer after my sophomore year. I agreed to the summer class on interrogation/counter interrogation because I thought it would be a boost as a lawyer. And because it came with room and board over the summer. But Johnson wrote the freaking textbook or getting information out of people."

"Dude, you could have been Jack Bauer?" Dean asked with a grin.

Sam gave his brother the Look. "If I had wanted to travel all over the world pulling information out of people and shooting things, I would have stayed home."

* "What the hell does that mean?" Flynn wondered out loud. *

Dean shrugged his acceptance of the explanation. "Did the textbook include water boarding?" He asked, to avoid the subject of Sam's leaving for Stanford. It had all been said before. "Are we gonna get shipped off to Gitmo? 'Cuz, Sammy, I don't speak Spanish and I don't wanna learn."

"Dude, one, Guantanamo Bay is run by Americans who speak English as bad as you. Two, you wouldn't need Spanish to speak to your fellow prisoners there, you'd need Farsi. And three, no, Professor Johnson doesn't believe that torture is effective or reliable."

"Depends on what you're using it for." Dean muttered.

"What?" Sam demanded, oddly defensive of his one-time instructor. He had _liked_ that she didn't have to resort to violence.

"I'm sure torture is not effective or reliable for getting information out of those poor bastards down in Guantanamo," Dean explained darkly. "But turning a human being into a raging psychopath? Works like a charm."

Sam had no real come back to that one.

"So." Dean shook off the dark mood as easily as it had come on. "Back to the original question: What the hell does the CIA want with us? As far as I know we've never done anything to threaten national security."

* "How could you _not_ know if you've threatened national security?" Provenza grumbled to no one in particular.

"Chief?" Gabriel looked to his boss. "Did you really teach this guy in college?"

"Sam Winchester, yes, I did. Almost fifteen years ago." Brenda was still staring at the computer screens. "I recommended him for recruitment. He was one of the best students I ever had come through my class. Hesitant witnesses would telling everything to those puppy-dog eyes. And, good Lord, the amount of menace that boy could bring to bear while staring a man down. At nineteen he could read complete strangers like a book to know which face he needed to pull out for them."

"So, he's a good interrogator." Gabriel distilled. "How good is he at countering?"

"Phenomenal," Brenda Leigh sighed heavily. "The Agency wanted to know more about the criminal activities his father was into, before they decided how much they could trust him. I had eight weeks to work on Sam to find out what the 'family business' was that he had run away from. I never did." *

.o0o.

Hours later the door to interrogation room three opened on Sam and Dean Winchester. Both were back to being bored and amusing themselves with their smart phones when Brenda Leigh Johnson walked in.

"Sam Winchester. Its been ages." She settled into a chair, giant black purse on the chair next to her. "So, how soon did you remember me?"

Sam gave a small smile, not answering the question. It was always best to say less when dealing with a professional; give them less to work with while trying to work you. Both brothers took chairs across the table from her.

"Right. So. After I finally put two and two together about where I remembered you from…" Brenda began.

Sam snorted. "You mean after you bugged us and I told you who I was."

"Wait, what?" Dean demanded.

"No expectation of privacy, right?" Sam shook his head in self-ridicule. "I should have remembered that."

"Yes, you should have." Brenda smiled teasingly. "As I was saying, after you were correctly identified, I made a few phone calls and pulled you boys' files."

A pair of Winchesters stuffed defensively. They knew what their files said: murder, torture, kidnapping, fraud and that was just the highlights. All good reasons why they neglected to give the police their real names. They glanced at each other, alarmed, and began a mental plan for escaping from the LAPD.

Brenda couldn't help but notice the sudden tension in both men, although she couldn't imagine why. Watching carefully, she lay four files in front of them. Two with an LAPD seal on them and two with the CIA seal on them, one for each brother. "The police database has next to nothing on either of you. Birth certificates for both of you. A ten year old California driver's license for Sam along with a few odd college jobs. A lot of different schools for both of you as kids…and then nothing. No addresses, no employment, no state issued ID's, nothing. You both turn into ghosts."

Again came that look between the brothers, the look that was a conversation that no one else could understand. All she caught was concern and confusion.

"Then I called in a few favors and pulled your CIA jacket, Sam." Brenda opened the CIA stamped files and extracted two sheets. "Want to guess what I found?"

Another significant look followed by a coiling of muscles.

"What?" Sam was finally compelled to ask when it became clear she needed the prompt.

"Let me read this out loud for you, 'In recognition of services rendered to this country and the world; for the blood, sweat and tears shed in the defense and protection of the citizens of both; all charges and convictions, all records of any charges or convictions, have been dropped and stricken from all record. They've earned that much." Brenda lowered the print out and saw their faces. And the shock and surprise there.

"You didn't know?" She asked, amazed.

Speechless, Sam shook his head.

"It goes on. 'In the event of encountering either of these men, please tell them from me: It's the least I could do. Thanks again for everything, guys.' Brenda set the paper down. "It's signed 'Chuck.'"

.o0o.


End file.
